The Internet comprises a vast number of computers and computer networks that are interconnected through communication links, with information being exchanged using various services such as electronic mail, FTP, Gopher, and the World Wide Web (also referred to as the “Web”). In addition to merely providing access to information, the Web has increasingly become a medium that is used to search for, shop for and order items (such as products, services and/or information) that are for purchase, rent, lease, license, trade, evaluation, sampling, subscription to, etc. In many circumstances, a user can visit the Web site of a Web merchant (or a “Web store”) or otherwise interact with an online retailer or electronic marketplace that provides one or more items, such as to view information about the items, give an instruction to place an order for one or more items, and provide information needed to complete the purchase (e.g., payment and shipping information).
After receiving an order for one or more items, a Web merchant then fulfills the order by providing the ordered items to the indicated recipient. Some product items may be available to be delivered electronically to a recipient (e.g., music downloaded over the Internet), while other product items (e.g., paperback books) may instead be delivered through physical distribution channels (e.g., shipment via a governmental postal service or private common carrier). Similarly, some service items may be provided electronically (e.g., providing email service), while others may be provided physically (e.g., performing cleaning services at the purchaser's house). The order fulfillment process typically used by Web merchants for product items that are to be physically provided shares similarities with other item ordering services that ship ordered items (e.g., catalog-based shopping, such as from mail-order companies), such as to deliver ordered items from one or more physical distribution or fulfillment centers operated by or on behalf of the Web merchant.
One area of commerce of increasing popularity involves providing various types of content to consumers in digital form, with the digital content then able to be used by the consumers on consumer devices that provide corresponding capabilities. For example, consumers are increasingly purchasing portable digital music player devices on which the consumers can store digital music (e.g., MP3 song files) and then later play it back—such player devices may store the digital music in flash memory and/or on a local hard disk, with some such player devices able to store thousands of music files. Digital music files are typically loaded onto such digital music player devices by consumers using a companion personal computer (e.g., via a physical cable between the player device and the personal computer) that has access to such files, such as by copying the music from a music CD loaded in an appropriate drive of the computer and/or by having downloaded the music files from one or more online music services (e.g., Napster.com, Apple Computer's iTunes, RealNetworks' RealPlayer Music Store, etc.). For some fee-based online music services, each music file may be individually purchased for a specified fee and then played by the consumer as desired (e.g., on the computer to which the file was downloaded or on other portable player devices, and without restrictions on the number of times or the amount of time for which the music file may be accessed). For other fee-based online music services, a consumer may access music files using a subscription to the music service that allows the consumer to download and use an unlimited number of music files, but with the music files usable only under specified conditions, such as only while the subscription continues to be valid, and in some situations only on specified types of devices that allow the continued subscription validity to be verified (e.g., devices using Microsoft Corporation's Janus Windows Media DRM (“Digital Rights Management”) 10 technology). In a similar manner, consumers may load and use various other types of non-executable digital media (e.g., videos, photos and other images, e-books and other textual information, etc.) on corresponding digital media player devices (e.g., digital photo display devices, digital video player devices, e-book reader devices, etc.).
Although consumers' ability to load and use various types of digital media on various types of consumer devices provides a variety of benefits, various problems exist. One such problem results from the difficulties faced by consumers in loading appropriate content on their digital media player devices, such as due to the content loading process being extremely time-consuming. For example, when downloading content from an online service to be loaded onto a consumer device, the consumer typically must first manually identify digital media items of interest, wait for the digital media items to be downloaded to a networked computer, and then wait while the digital media items are transferred to a player device. For digital music, for example, this downloading process can take many hours when downloading thousands of music files, even with a high-speed broadband network connection and high-speed connection between the computer and player device, and downloading a video file is typically even more time-consuming than downloading a music or other audio file. Moreover, the process of manually loading hundreds of CDs into one or more computer drives and then copying music files from the CDs will typically take even longer than downloading the music, and manually copying video files from DVDs would similarly be a labor-intensive and time-consuming process. Accordingly, it would be beneficial to provide capabilities to assist consumers in more easily obtaining appropriate digital media that is loaded on their consumer devices, as well as other described capabilities.